COVID-19 lockdown: Daily-wage earners without ration card need help, says AASAA

A Correspondent

GUWAHATI: The 40-day lockdown is impacting people from all strata of the society but the worst affected are the daily wage earners. The Government has come out with various relief measures like providing additional ration to ration card holders and providing some financial assistance to elderly, widows and physically challenged persons. Civil society has also come out to help people in need. But there is a sizeable population who have received none of the government support. They are the people residing in the far-flung villages, bordering the forest areas along the Assam-Bhutan and Assam-Nagaland borders. They have also not received any assistance from the NGOs/CBOs or philanthropic organizations.

PAJHRA, an NGO working among the Adivasi community in Assam, with the help of the AASAA (All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam) and the AAWAA (All Adivasi Women Association of Assam), has identified many such families who are in dire straits. They are daily wage earners and don’t have ration cards. They have almost exhausted whatever little saving they had and are staring at the impending starvation. Stephen Lakra, the president of AASAA, when asked, said, “For us the fear of hunger is more imminent than the fear of COVID-19. The Adivasis in general are marginalized and poor. We want the government machineries to pay attention to these areas as well”.

In its first phase AASAA and AAWAA volunteers, supported by PAJHRA representatives reached out to more than 300 such families in Gossaigaon and Kokrajhar district with a survival food packet consisting of 10 kg of rice, 2 kg of dal, ½ litre of oil, 2 kg of potato, 1 kg of salt, 1 packet of turmeric powder and 2 bars of soap.

PAJHRA, along with its networking partners like Nawa Bihan Samaj, Gana Chetna Samaj, Tezpur Social Service Society, Students’ Organizations, AASAA and AAWAA, has identified families who need immediate aid in Golaghat, Karbi Anglong, Sonitpur, Lakhimpur, Jorhat, Charaideo and other districts as well.

“We are getting many distress calls from remote villages and tea garden areas also,” said an activist who is working with the team. She added, “Yesterday, a group of 20 mothers from Majhi Gaonin Morangi Block reached out to our ground volunteers. They had food left for only one meal. After verifying the details, we found out 30 families from the area with no food. We sent our survival food packets to the village but there are hundreds of families in the block who will exhaust their grains in the next couple of days. There are many more in the similar situation in most of the districts of Assam.”

The activist further added that the funds for the survival food packets have been generated by requesting friends, colleagues, acquaintances, friends of friends. “But we need organizations and other groups to collaborate with us as the numbers of people in distress are large and resources limited,” she added.

Assam has over 60 lakh population belonging to the Tea community, which is approximately 12 lakh households. Out of which nearly 6 lakh households work in the tea plantation but a sizable number of households live outside the plantations who are daily wage earners and don’t have ration cards to avail the subsidized food grain provided by the government.

These daily wage earners — in the villages, temporary workers in the gardens and workers in the lockout and sick gardens without ration cards — are the families which are finding it extremely hard to sail through this crisis.

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